After re-booting vista, windows explorer does not see content on dvd/cd media. A "burn a disk" dialog box comes up asking me to "prepare this blank disk." If I restart explorer.exe using process explorer, everything works fine. Would appreciate advice please. Is this a corrupt file problem, or a registry error?

[quote name='jonmil' post='779892' date='15-Jun-2009 09:52']After re-booting vista, windows explorer does not see content on dvd/cd media. A "burn a disk" dialog box comes up asking me to "prepare this blank disk." If I restart explorer.exe using process explorer, everything works fine. Would appreciate advice please. Is this a corrupt file problem, or a registry error?[/quote]

1.) Does this happen after every re-boot? Even a cold boot from power off?
2.) Have you checked the event logs?
3.) Even though it is unlikely to be a hardware problem, have you checked the physical connections?

[quote name='joeperez' post='779902' date='15-Jun-2009 15:11']1.) Does this happen after every re-boot? Even a cold boot from power off?
2.) Have you checked the event logs?
3.) Even though it is unlikely to be a hardware problem, have you checked the physical connections?

Joe[/quote]

1) yep, incl cold boot
2) checked event log, lots of informations, warnings, errors but nothing that seems to relate to the problem
3) yep. In fact other apps like windows media player, irfanview etc. work fine. Dell thought it was h/w and gave me a replacement drive, but no diff.

[quote name='jonmil' post='780549' date='18-Jun-2009 15:47']No luck via that approach. Vista happily recognizes the drive but sees a blank disc until I kill explorer.exe and restart it. So a bit of a nuisance but a simple workaround. Thanks for the help.[/quote]

Try using Device Manager to remove the CD/DVD drive and then re-boot and let Vista discover the drive again.

[quote name='joeperez' post='780934' date='21-Jun-2009 23:44']1.) Do you have service pack 2 installed?
2.) Are you up-to-date with other Microsoft patches?
3.) When you boot the PC do you get any errors about services not starting?

Joe[/quote]

1.) Have not installed vista SP2.
2.) yep, except for some Office 2007 updates and an old update applicable to the Help files.
3.) nope

[quote name='jonmil' post='780999' date='22-Jun-2009 09:16']1.) Have not installed vista SP2.
2.) yep, except for some Office 2007 updates and an old update applicable to the Help files.
3.) nope[/quote]

[quote name='jonmil' post='781327' date='23-Jun-2009 16:53']Well, I bit the bullet and installed SP2. It worked! A dialog box still comes up saying "burn a disc" but explorer now reads the content on cold boot so everything is fine. Thanks a lot for the help

Jon[/quote]
You are welcome, Jon.
Not sure why that dialog comes up tho. See if you can get a little more detail and perhaps we can figure that out.